O‑RAN expands both flexibility and technical scope across the network stack. That shift places far greater demand on validation, as vendors must prove performance, interoperability, and security across a wide range of components. For many, the challenge does not sit in design, but in access to the full set of test capabilities required to bring a product to market.
Testing access has become a defining factor in how quickly vendors can compete and scale. Traditional models require significant investment to build in‑house environments or force teams to rely on multiple facilities to complete one validation cycle. A more centralized approach offers a different path, with one environment able to support a broad range of test cases under a single framework. That structure reduces duplication, shortens validation cycles, and provides more consistent outcomes across the ecosystem.
As O‑RAN continues to mature, the role of shared infrastructure becomes more central to industry progress. Broader access to testing allows more vendors to participate, while greater consistency across validation helps improve interoperability at scale. The focus now moves beyond standards alone, toward the practical infrastructure required to support long‑term growth and deployment across the market.
VIAVI Automated Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN (VALOR) is a purpose-built, AI-enabled Lab-as-a-Service for Open RAN in Chandler, Arizona. To learn more about VALOR, visit: https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/valor
Steve Saunders:
Eric, it's great to be here. You're doing really exciting things here, but for people who don't know it, what is Valor and where did it come from?
Erik Probstfield:
So VALOR is a O-RAN test facility. It was funded by the NTIA under a three-year grant from the PWSCIF Fund. We received a total of approximately $22 million, not including the VIAVI cost share. And the primary objective was to enable and democratize access to O-RAN testing for the ecosystem, in particular the US ecosystem.
Steve Saunders:
In simple terms, what's the problem which you're solving here for your customers?
Erik Probstfield:
O-RAN testing is generally done by people that have the ability and the financial wherewithal to be able to bring a test facility into their possession. And that is a very expensive process. It's typically multi-millions of dollars unless you're doing just a very narrow niche. And the problem is that as O-RAN testing has become more complex, more diverse, you need more capability, that the cost of that has gotten substantially higher. And so as a result, now this sort of facility works much, much better where what you're doing is you're providing basically lab as a service or test as a service, which can be utilized by multiple customers that can come in and use the facility and use it on a fractional basis.
Steve Saunders:
So this is an O-RAN facility. A lot of people in the telecom industry, when they hear that, they think, "Oh, they must be testing 5G antenna or something like that." But you're doing a lot more than that, right?
Erik Probstfield:
Basically all the types of testing they can think of related to wireless, we're doing all these. So whether it's conformance, performance, interoperability, security, we're doing all of these. We actually have over 600 test cases that we're capable of doing here today and every day that number continues to grow. In addition to that, we've also now started to incorporate a significant amount of AI into how we're running this lab. And at this point now, we actually have a highly automated lab, which is very, very close to a dark lab scenario where there's very little actual manual plugging and unplugging of components as you go to test them. Much of this is now automated at this point.
Steve Saunders:
But what does it all add up to?
Erik Probstfield:
The enormous advantage here for in particular these smaller entities is to accelerate the innovation. So because they don't have access to this type of testing or go to say four or five different smaller labs that can provide a piece of the testing they need. Whereas when they come here, they can get all of it here in one location. And by doing that and providing all of this access upfront, it significantly reduces their cycle to be able to get back in their cycles of learning so they can get the market faster.
Steve Saunders:
AI is changing everything. Do you agree with that?
Erik Probstfield:
Absolutely. Here this has all really occurred mostly within the last 12 months and it's been a real step function change for us. We have way more capability. We have way more automation. We have way more control over what we do today and a lot of that has been developed with AI.